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Body Image

I normally get my daily hit of general goings-on in the world digitally: Buzzfeed, Tumblr, Twitter, etc (everyone has their own favourite app they instinctively go to). But the other day I thought I would treat myself and get a glossy mag to pair with a good coffee and cake.

Wanting more than “Jennifer Lawrence eats french toast” and “I divorced my oven to marry my shower cap” I opted for the sophisticated looking Elle magazine. However after only a few seconds in`I noticed something a bit odd…

There were a lot of ads

A TRUCKLOAD OF ADS

Frustrated, I decided to divide the advert pages from the actual magazine pages, the results shown in the picture below. Looks like a fair amount of advertising pages…..…If the pile on the left were the magazine pages.

But they’re not

…the pile on the right are the magazine article pages.

THE PILE ON THE LEFT IS ADVERTISING?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

And I’m not counting pages with reviews on, or less than half a page of text as advertising. Anything that was promoting one brand was an advert- so if the page had 10 red dresses on by different designers this would not count as advertising……………….you get the idea.

So let’s just look at that in more detail; there were 35 article pages……against a whopping 315 pages of adverts! And I didn’t count the ads on the other side of the article!!!!

What is going on!

This is a magazine not a look book right?

Yes I got a free Benefit they’re real mascara

But I paid £4.30…..!?!?!?

Better to point out that Elle is not the only magazine to fill many pages with promotional shots paid for by all sorts of brands- the digital age has made it harder to produce profitable paper versions of lots of media. We’re used to seeing promotions everywhere, literally all over- don’t be surprised to find an ad for moving house on the inside of your panty liners pack (sorry guys).